The latest UN climate report is gloomy, with some sunny patches
It says that adaptation is as important as prevention
THERE IS A peculiarly modern form of the uncanny which Glenn Albrecht, a philosopher, dubs “solastalgia”. It is an uneasy feeling that what you took to be the natural way of things has been changed, without your consent, and that your life does not fit into it as once it did. It is the sort of feeling you might expect if, say, what used to be an unusually wet year was now merely typical. It might be dismissed as the “new normal”. But it does not feel normal, and it never will. Before you get used to it, it will have changed yet again.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Act now or pay later”
From the March 5th 2022 edition
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